Harvest mid-June

Happy Fathers day to all "dads" - with two legged children and furbabies. We spent out weekend with my FIL on Saturday instead of Sunday. It's been very very hot in garden and I haven't done much outside. Got a new trimmer to tackle weeds, but it's a long process. In the large garden my hubby took a weed-whacker and cleared most of the beds and I'm starting to replant everything from scratch. Weeds just took over and killed off much of my plantings, and then groudnhog finished it off. So we wiped it all out and started again with new batch of tomatoes and peppers, some melons and cucumbers and squash. Potatoes and onions from spring planting remain. Then I had a chance to get into the small garden and pick some berries - red currants and gooseberry. And sadly found two baby groundhogs. "sadly" refers to the fact that one was already dead and another barely alive. As much as I hate having them in my garden it hurts my heart to see animal die and I don't wish to harm them. Unfortunately not all my neighbors think the same way and these babies clearly ate something laced with poison.

Anyway, life goes on. On a side note, I picked fresh garlic to see how the head is coming along, and it will need at least 3 more weeks. One thing that I stumbled on while we were out this weekend was this pillow - I thought it was a perfect slogan for me, so had my hubby pose for a picture to show it :)

 

And of course current "blooms" around the house and back yard are plentiful,  with variety of lilies, aslstibe, begonia, and introduced this week were two pots of phlox. I try to stick to perrenials but once in a while will mix annuals for a kick of color.

One thing that I do want to show is my little african violets that I keep at home - I sniped a leaf from a plant of my coworker two years ago and put it in water to root, and it's been growing beautifully. This past winter I had a whimsy of taking a seed of a pomelo that I was eating, and stuck it into the same pot and today I have a tiny seedling growing. Will see how well it will take.

So come and share how your gardens are doing this time of the year.

First harvest in June

Not much being picked in the garden, since a lot of stuff was lost to weeds. Groundhog paid a visit to my front garden again and had a nice lunch so the only thing that I'll have out of those beds are potatoes and onions. But I still have side garden that's producing so we have enough to eat. Been picking few strawberries for snack, some greens like spinach and arugula, mustard greens, and early scapes - it was really hot for two weeks and scapes came out much earlier than usual.

My fava beans are filling out nicely and I look forward to having some soon. And first color started to show up on my red currants so I will be picking them soon and making jam out of them. My hubby doesn't like to eat them as they are tart, but in jam they're pretty good.  Also picked a bunch of thyme and hang it down in the boiler room to dry out for winter so I can have herbs for cooking.

Another thing I'm looking forward to is picking fresh gooseberries. They make a wonderful snack. And anticipation for much later in a year - persimmon! It's in bloom right now and I really hope the tree will not drop fruit.

 

Of course no day goes without visit from our deer - you can always count on seeing them in the back yard morning and evening.

 

Hope your gardens are growing nicely and enjoying the sunshine.

Back home and drowning in weeds

Can I just say "holly cow blasted weeds!" now? How in the world did so many weeds grew and so tall in such short time? I didn't think i was away that long. Anyhow, here's the preview of what the outside of my garden looks like..

The inside part I'm too embarrassed to show. It will take me couple of weeks to clean it all up.

On another note, that NZ was awesome! So gorgeous, I can't even describe it. Highly recommend everyone to go there at least once in their lifetime.